


Those We Were (For A While)

by Sadisticsparkle (sadisticsparkle)



Series: Steve/Tony Ficlets [6]
Category: Bullet Points (Comics)
Genre: Grief/Mourning, M/M, POV Tony Stark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-29
Updated: 2020-05-29
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:40:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24436012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sadisticsparkle/pseuds/Sadisticsparkle
Summary: The blueprints hadn’t prepared Tony for the light bouncing off the battered metal, for the empty stare of its empty eye sockets or the dim circle in the middle of the chest. He traced its lines with his gaze, remembering every day he had spent hunched over the schematics picking its inner workings and every night he had spent sprawled under its pilot letting him take Tony apart.
Relationships: Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Series: Steve/Tony Ficlets [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1764772
Comments: 6
Kudos: 20
Collections: Lights on Park Ave





	Those We Were (For A While)

**Author's Note:**

> Let's pretend they did meet, ha.

The blueprints hadn’t prepared Tony for the light bouncing off the battered metal, for the empty stare of its empty eye sockets or the dim circle in the middle of the chest. He traced its lines with his gaze, remembering every day he had spent hunched over the schematics picking apart its inner workings and every night he had spent sprawled under its pilot letting him take Tony apart.

It stood there, the Iron Man, like a weighty reminder of all of Tony’s memories about it. His childhood spent in a daze of newsreels, textbooks, and stories about the armor and its pilot, about all the brave, stupid, reckless things Steve Rogers had done. And then growing up, still wondering about those tall tales, still chasing that daze, that promise of a braver future. Chasing leads, making a few well-placed calls, calling in a few favors, until he reached the broken husk of a man at the core of it all.

So different from the stamps, the monuments, the Smithsonian. Tony had drunk everything — Steve’s wry smile and his aloof posture. The detached way he indulged Tony’s curiosity and the brief flashes of something else when Tony’s fingers brushed Steve’s knees or when he leaned towards him across the table.

And then Steve’s quiet laugh in seedy bars and his fingers running across Tony’s back in even seedier motels. Kisses alongside Steve’s jaw, too tender for what they were doing but Tony hadn’t been able to hold himself back. He had wanted so much more, so much more of everything, but it had ended soon because Steve Rogers had been brave, stupid, and reckless right to the end.

And now all that tethered him to whatever they had been and weren’t anymore were the Iron Man’s blueprints and a business pitch. A business pitch that was everything but the truth because how could he tell Richards the truth? How could he explain that all he wanted was for the armor to dig into his flesh, to tear into his chest until it found his heart and maybe, just maybe, then he could lie to himself and pretend his heartbeat was Steve’s?


End file.
